Two people seeing the world together

Month: March 2016

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting on here this trip. And you probably thought “Wow she didn’t post much” last time. I arrived in Paris this morning after taking a overnight bus from Bordeaux. It took about 7.5 hours and I got here at about 6am. Luckily my hostel was very easy to find and my stuff is now safely in a locker until I can check in and get my room later. I’m staying at the Paris Generator Hostel which I’ll post about later but I will say that I really enjoyed staying at the Venice Generator when I was there back in July.

Over the last week I spent time in London and Norwich. I went to the Tate Modern Art Museum, saw a movie, and slept, a lot. Then on thursday I headed back to London for a night and at 8am caught a flight from Gatwick to Bordeaux.

Bordeaux was really pretty. I met up with Jessica, who I met in Madrid, and we spent the day catching up and shopping. Then I did something I’ve never done before. That America doesn’t really do. We got a ride share from Bordeaux to her apartment in Agen. In Europe, I know for sure in France, Spain, and Italy not positive about other places, its not uncommon for people to go on sites like blablacar.com where you can put in where you’re going to and from on what date and they can match you up with a driver who will drive you there. The difference between this and apps like Uber and Lyft, which I use all the time back home, is that it’s for longer distances and there may be other people using the same driver. I’ve now done it twice, the first car was great. It was a french man driving and a french woman who spoke some english and she was funny and very nice. It was a really good experience. The second wasn’t bad. However The one thing to be aware of is that when in countries where english isn’t the native language people may not speak it.

I understand some french, more than I always thing I can, however my verbal skills are very slim and so on the 2nd ride, the one without Jess who speaks french well, I was in a car with 4 people who spoke no english at all. But here’s the real thing. If you’re trying to get from point a to point b and it’s expensive by train look for rideshares they’re cheap, neither was over 10€, and you can meet really nice people!

For america I think there are a few reasons we don’t have the same kind of thing. The main reason being that America is so big. In Europe 4 hours in a car is enough to almost get across a country, in some places it’s enough to get though more than one, in America you’re still in the same state. The other reason is that we’re more suspicious of people and I don’t thing we trust people as much. I know I’d feel weird having strange people driving with me. But here it’s convenient.

One last bit of advice. Also check busses. I took an overnight bus last night that got me from Bordeaux to Paris for under 8€ and I didn’t have to pay for a hostel. In my mind the not so great sleep was worth the 22€ I saved on top of the price of a train.

I’ll post about Paris when I’ve seen more than the metro and this hostel!